Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reillyis the founder of O'Reilly Media. He popularized the terms open source and Web 2.0...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth6 June 1954
CountryIreland
control fit lead life pattern work
I wanted more control of my life. I wanted work to fit in, not to dominate; to support, not to lead the pattern of my life.
audience boring deliver few lousy opportunity paid speakers works
There are a lot of lousy conferences that pander to sponsors. They end up creating an opportunity for boring speakers who are paid shills for their companies. We still get a few of those, but we really try to police it. Think about who the audience is and what works for them, and deliver high-quality content.
coming cool fresh generation government harness opportunity service since talent work
There is a possibility of fresh talent coming to work for the government. Millennials are the most public-spirited generation since the 1960s. There is an opportunity to harness that generation and make government service cool again.
apply changing code culture energy government great teaching technology work
A lot of my energy is going to Code for America, Jen Pahlka's non-profit startup. We're doing a lot of great work teaching government how to apply technology and changing the culture of government.
built duck internet people scripts tape websites wonderful work
A lot of the websites built through the 1990s used Perl. The first webmaster of Sun Microsystems coined a wonderful phrase. He said Perl is the duck tape of the Internet - it's this language that people would write all these scripts that make things just work.
business model work wrote
My original business model - I actually wrote this down - was 'interesting work for interesting people.'
believe beneath dynamics good lays life people social work
I believe people are fundamentally good and want to find things that make life better for themselves. There are social dynamics for people that work, and there are ones that are pathological. But beneath every 'no' lays a 'yes' that had never been broken. I put my life-faith in that.
experience publishers recreate saying
I see publishers bemoaning their fate and saying that this is the end of publishing. No! Publishers will recreate themselves. Some of that comes from my experience as a print publisher.
appetites deeply defined influenced rather virtue
I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.
became companies dominant grew microsoft model oracle
Proprietary software grew up, starting really in the 1980s, as an alternative and that became the dominant model with the rise of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and the like.
business chewed everybody extract gets goes government model money opposition possible run senior somewhat whose
Everybody who goes into government gets somewhat chewed up in the process. Being a senior appointee is like being at a startup, only more so: You run into opposition from the entrenched oligopoly of contractors whose business model is to extract as much money from government as possible for doing as little as possible.
business change company conference helps knowledge spreading
At O'Reilly, the way we think about our business is that we're not a publisher; we're not a conference producer; we're a company that helps change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
age broke bubble invested left next people technology virtually
Virtually every real breakthrough in technology had a bubble which burst, left a lot of people broke who'd invested in it, but also left the infrastructure for this next golden age, effectively.
came develop saw services
I came up with the idea that I wanted to develop products because I saw services businesses being a dead end long term.